


poison

by politicalmedievalistnerd



Category: Hollyoaks
Genre: Depression, F/F, F/M, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Mentions of Cancer, Miscarriage mention, Postpartum Depression, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16554935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmedievalistnerd/pseuds/politicalmedievalistnerd
Summary: maybe it wouldn't have done anything at all. maybe it was already part of her, even then. // peri still can't sleep for guilt





	poison

Some nights, she lays there and manages to think. Most times she doesn’t - it’s tiring, every day is exhausting, and the moment they find some sort of shelter, she falls into a dreamless sleep that numbs her and spares her the pain. On rare days, when they go to sleep in the same place twice, when they have spent the day hiding, or they’ve had good luck and got a particularly filling meal,  she thinks.

 

Peri didn’t do a lot of that before, did she? Pregnant, giving up her baby, causing a miscarriage -  _ everything  _ she did with Nico by her side, really - everything she did to Prince. What has she ever done  _ right?  _ It seems as though her life has been a series of near-constant screw ups since the day she was born. Before, even - didn’t she wreck her mum’s life? Sometimes, in the cover of night, she wishes the brain tumour had killed her. For everyone else’s sake - her life ending at fourteen might’ve made everyone else’s better. She thinks of Tom. Wouldn’t that have been better?

 

Sometimes, she thinks she misses him more than anyone else. More than Prince, more than her parents, more than her grandparents, or her friends, or even -  _ Steph.  _ Would anybody else have walked so proudly beside her, waddling pregnant through the school? Would anybody else have come to scans at fifteen?  _ Everybody I love leaves me,  _ she remembers him saying, and that’s when her eyes really start to burn, when she feels like she can’t breathe. She’s left too.

 

Maybe that’s why he loves Steph so much - she can’t leave him for a long while. Maybe she will be everything Peri is not - kind, and smart, and reasonable, and beautiful. Maybe Peri was pretty once, but not anymore. Even with a chance to look in the mirror, she readily avoids it. Sometimes it’s easier not to be Peri anymore, just to be some random homeless girl, with no family, no friends, no past and no future. She floats anchorless, wafting through the streets like a bad smell. 

 

Maybe Steph will be like Tom, and it’s best if Peri isn’t there. She’d only make things worse - she makes everything worse, for everyone, even for these two, even for Dean and Harley. An extra mouth to feed. She deserves what she’s getting, right now, she knows that much. With the way she’s acted, she could rot in hell and it might be mercy. She tries to sleep, huddles closer to the step, but faces have burned into the backs of her eyelids and she feels sick. She sees Tom, hurt,  _ disappointed,  _ she sees Nico, quaking with range, and then dead, asleep, almost peaceful. She sees Prince, disgusted, her mum yelling, she sees the car crash. How can so many people be dead, or hurt, when she still lives? She sees Steph, and the tears begin to roll down her cheeks. Peri turns slightly. She can’t let them see her cry. They’ll make her go back.

 

_ I’m sorry,  _ she thinks, as if that might be enough. Deep down, she knows it isn’t. Peri wonders, if someone bought her a time machine, would she get in? How far back would she go? Would she get rid of Nico before everything started, protect Tom? Would she convince her old self to stay, for Steph? Would she stop the car accident? Stop herself from ever being born? Conceived?  _ Nothing good comes from you, Peri Lomax,  _ she tells herself, chest heaving. Jade is dead and she is not, but she should be. 

Eventually, she falls asleep, exhausted from crying, from the throbbing in her brain telling her that she should join Nico, join Jade in death. She dreams, for once. She sees Tom. He tells her he loves her, always, that she is forgiven, that she can come home, and takes her into the living room, lets her hold Steph, and rubs her shoulders. That’s how Peri knows it’s a dream. It’s the sort of thing she imagined when she was younger, and pregnant, and stupid, and selfish. Tom doesn’t want her anymore. Nobody wants her, not even Harley, not even here. She doesn’t want herself. She wakes, sick rising in her stomach, and stumbles into the gutter, retching violently.

 

_ You are poison. You are poison.  _ She thinks of the poison Nico had, and wonders, that day she almost gave it to her dad, if she should have drunk it herself. Drained it, let the poison fill her belly. Maybe it wouldn’t have done anything at all. Maybe it was already part of her, even then. She was the cancer that killed Jade, the tumour in her own brain. She is death, and pain, and misery, and so she sits on the steps of a yet-to-be-opened shop, and looks at the lines across her wrist, and lets her feelings eat her from the inside out.

 

Later, the sun has risen, and she is two streets away from the others. The shopkeeper arrives, a man in his twenties, in a blue apron with a nametag that reads  _ Thomas.  _ She wonders if Tom is haunting her. Can somebody haunt you if they aren’t dead yet? If you only killed them a little bit? Before he can yell at her to get away, she stands and pushes past him, grateful for the buffer that her jacket acts as. She doesn’t want to touch anybody. Nobody has touched Peri’s skin in months.

 

She finds the others, and they do a lot of walking that day, sightseeing, maybe. They cross a busy street and she finds herself wondering what would happen if she stopped in the middle of the road. Harley yells at her to hurry up. Her legs are like lead but she makes it, car horns ringing in her ears, because it seems nobody will give her the fucking mercy of running her over. She supposes death can’t kill itself. The parasite must drain everybody else of life before it can die. Peri still has work to do.

 

For once, she is right. She is a parasite. It’s confirmed in the way that Harley looks at her, in the way that the people at the soup kitchen stare, in the glances of passers-by. All of them tell her,  _ you are taking, and taking, and taking, and what do you give? What do you give back, Peri Lomax?  _

 

She hopes that Steph never hates her in the way that she hates her own mother. Then again, she knows Tom won’t let that happen. For Tom is all that is good and bright in the world, and not even Peri could suck him dry. The only good thing to come out of her was half of him, too. An art lesson from some time ago sticks in her brain. Tom is white, he brings light, he mixes with other people’s colours and makes them brighter, and Peri is black. She darkens them, she stains them, and the more people she touches, the more they mix to become a muddy brown like the earth of a grave. She needs to be lightened but can’t get that without darkening him. 

 

Peri is poison and she mustn’t touch anyone else. And so she stays, in spite of her heart screaming for home. There’s no antidote for her, and as such she must stay away. The parasite must starve. She can’t go home.

 

She can never go home again. 


End file.
